


Reason Enough

by calescently



Series: A Long Week [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood, Canon Compliant, M/M, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5795044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calescently/pseuds/calescently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Sam wants Steve to do is give up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reason Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I started on a few things during Sam/Bucky week 2015... forever ago. If I wait til they're all done to post them, CACW will be out and I'll be too deep in my feelings to do anything. So. This is from Day 1's prompt. Enjoy??

_**that which is good** _

 

The last thing Sam wants Steve to do is give up.

The Winter Soldier is unstable, dangerous, and— according to Captain America —lugging around a heart of gold. The man that dragged Steve out of the Potomac put his life on the line to serve and got _fucked up_ , mentally and physically. He’s not the first broken soldier Sam has met, although possibly the most violent.

Barnes could hurt a lot of people. He could hurt himself. He deserves help.

Sam believes in Steve, and Steve believes in Bucky. Sam _wants_ to believe that helping Bucky won’t mean stopping him.

“He saved me,” Steve tells his coffee one night.

The gloves on Sam’s hands feel too tight. He scrubs his boots in the shitty safe house sink, absently analyzing the blood that comes off: dark, arterial. Barnes may move like a ghost, but he’s getting messy. Savage. Sam doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for Nazis, but carnage is not the language of decent men.

Steve averts his gaze.

He just _inhales_ , jaw working like a loaded spring and Sam knows he smells it, knows the copper tang floods his nose. He spares his partner a careful glance. The water runs red but Sam doesn’t blink. Sam is a soldier. Sam is a healer.

They’ve both got blood on their hands.

“I know, Cap.”

 

**_that which is beautiful_ **

 

Sam has a secret.

He thinks about telling Steve. Intends to. Hell, sometimes he even wants to. It’s not that Steve couldn’t see if he wanted to, though. Steve is more than welcome to slog through the reels and reels of security footage Sam has compiled.

The data from tape 43-A is months old and functionally obsolete.

Two hours in, twenty minutes before an unidentified agent decimates a Hydra base in Argentina, a shadow slinks into view. So slow and smooth you hardly notice, the figure creeps through a weed-shrouded alley. The video feed blinks out after a few minutes, but the audio remains, just barely.

A thin, reedy whistle fights through the static. The sound is faint and a little abrasive, oddly pitched. If Sam didn’t know his birds so well he’d think it was a starling.

But where would a starling learn _Round Midnight_?

 

**_that which is love_ **

 

Finding Barnes was never going to be pretty, but Sam didn’t think it would happen like this.

The soldier hunches low and quiet, painfully stoic. The urge to blast the metal trap away and _help_ makes Sam’s hands clench. He turns away to talk to Steve. Barnes is a threat. They both know that.

“You know he’s not who he used to be, right?” Sam asked once, words ringing soft against steel in an empty train depot. Steve shook his head. His eyes darkened, or maybe it was just dusk deepening.

“I know people change. I did. Still...” He swallows, scrubs a hand across his face. “I think part of him hasn’t, Sam. The part that I know. The part that knows _me_.”

The words don’t ring with pride or desperation. Just Steve’s truth, laid bare and insurmountable. Doesn’t make it any easier to hear. But Sam pulled Riley out of too many messes to condemn anyone for being loyal to a fault. It’s not something you can run from. 

He turns his back on the Winter Soldier. He talks strategy with Steve, tries to figure out a way to make this work, to weave the man behind him into their lives. He could never be anything less.

See, Steve knows that Bucky might be the kind of guy you stop, but his heart doesn’t believe it. Maybe that’s how they’re different.

Steve believes in Bucky.

Sam watches the man who whistles _Round Midnight_ before missions and hopes (and believes) that he’s the kind you save.

**Author's Note:**

> “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and--I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.” 
> 
> ― Lorraine Hansberry, 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black'
> 
> (I headcanon Sam as having read this and connecting it to the PJ 'These Things We Do, That Others May Live' motto later and just generally being a swell individual.)


End file.
